We got up before the sun to get the nice calm morning on the ocean. I wasn’t quite ready to leave our awesome camp spot, but it was time to find the next one! We made good time paddling the northern length of the peninsula.
We came around the point to the west side and I decided to take a break and try my luck at fishing. I’ve made a kind of hand line with the nylon wrapped around a piece of wood. I dropped my huge hook down and let it run to the bottom where I jigged and played with the line (as per the lady in the fishing store). Within 5 minutes I was pulling up my first fish! I felt greedy and went for a second round, no sooner had my hook touched the bottom than a second fish was having a nibble, it was fish number twos lucky day as he was a bit small so off he went back into the big blue. I figured this meant I could have one last shot, after a few minutes I was pulling up the perfect two person dinner sized fish. I was stoked! I gutted and filleted them then and there so the otters would have some lunch and we wouldn’t be inviting the bears to our camp with smelly fish guts. We made our way around to the north length of the peninsula where a huge swell was rolling in and breaking on the point. We paddled about 500m off shore to avoid it. There were waves breaking on most of the little bays on the north side, this wasn’t part of the plan! I had assumed it would be dead calm on this side...lesson learnt. We came to a suitable landing spot, a big stony bay. It looked awesome except the beach was very steep. We landed between the sets and dragged our boats up the steep beach. When we got to the top we were so happy to see a big river flowing out of the Forrest and to the ocean.
We quickly set up camp and both jumped in the river, it was ‘very fresh’ as Ngaio says but it felt so good to rinse away the salt. I made a big driftwood fire to cook dinner on. We cooked the fish over the fire with garlic and onions that we had saved from winter harbour. Time to eat!
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(first image and blog via satellite phone)